The ultimate ‘now’

I was around in Southwark for the 40th anniversary memories of the publication of John Robinson's Honest to God. This year is the 50th anniversary. In this week's Church Times the excellent Mark Vernon runs though the issues again before Richard Harries puts it all in to a personal context.

Honest to God caused a huge debate. Robinson called for a re-think of theology and the purpose of the church. En route he drew on Bonhoeffer's thinking, but didn't quite go where I think Bonhoeffer himself might have been heading. Big headlines didn't help the seriousness of his case, but it did lead to discussions everywhere about God. (In today's world this is the responsibility of the New Atheists who, in trying to diss God and theists end up getting people talking about God and theism – fulfilling the Law of Unintended Consequences, I guess.)

What Richard Harries does is place the phenomenon into the wider cultural and political context of the 1960s, and particularly its idealism. Which, of course, immediately points up the danger of reading history through a contemporary lens. The debates about Margaret Thatcher did the same: it was easy to spot those who hadn't lived through the 1970s and those who had.

The loss of idealism is troubling. Students these days are hardly likely to annoy the hell out of taxpayers by demonstrating; they have to concentrate on minimising and then paying off massive debts before they have even started.

The contrast is acute for me when I go to Kazakhstan and talk with young people who, whilst being realistic about the 'challenges', are immensely proud of their 22 year old country and seriously optimistic about the future. The only way I have been able to think about this is that they are building something and shaping a future – a bit like European countries after 1945. Contrast that with the tired cynicism that characterises Europe and we seem not to be building something, but merely trying half-heatedly on to something we have inherited.

This is also true of European ecumenism. At a round-table discussion with Herman von Rumpoy last year in Brussels, I ventured to suggest that the European narrative derived from two world wars and the shedding of oceans of blood had run its course. Yes, we must learn from our recent history, and, as Bertolt Brecht says in the conclusion of his play The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, recognise that 'the bitch [of fascism] is on heat again. But, I fear that the narrative emerging from mid-20th century Europe does not hold the same power for my children's generation as it does for those of us shaped by the war. We need to create a new narrative that engages the subconscious psyche of a new generation for whom the twentieth century is 'history' and not 'memory'.

OK, it is not exactly a deep observation; but, it is one that haunts me. I think it is a task that is urgent and yet being largely ignored. All efforts go into trying to secure what we have (largely, the institutions that define Europe in terms of administration and process), rather than creating something imaginatively new.

This is on my mind also because I have just finished reading Cees Nooteboom's book Roads to Berlin. It is a strange book. In three parts, the bulk of the text comprises reportage and memoir from immediately before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989/90. It is immediate and has the vivid benefit of recreating the atmosphere in Berlin as the world changed – all seen through the eyes of an outsider (he is Dutch) living through, yet detached from, those epic events. In parts 2 and 3 he reflects back on those events and on Germany and 'Germanness' twenty years later.

It is an uneven book, but better for it. It is unpretentious – although there were many references I didn't get, and this made me feel both uneducated and a bit stupid. But, it is a good read for anyone who wants to think about history, how we live through and reflect on it, how we need to look at ourselves through the eyes of an other if we are to think clearly about who we are and how/why we have become who and what we are.

The trouble with history is that we always think that 'now' is the ultimate – the end – when it is only tomorrow's yesterday and will look different when looked back upon by outsiders.

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5 Responses to “The ultimate ‘now’”

When it was first published, I was a VSO in Masasi at the time the Bishop, Trevor Huddleston had banned the book from the diocese ! As a potential ordinand I was keen to read it and it was quickly passed round select priests in the diocese. That it was 50 years ago makes it history ! It also reminded me that Eric James’ seminal biography of Robinson gives the best history of the event, and indeed of the Anglican church at that time

Thinking about what you say re Europe and lack of imagination: from your ecumenical work there, how much would you say it’s more difficult for the Church to make a contribution to the debate about Europe’s future, because the Church in Europe is so inherently divided (as it has been since the Reformation)?
To make a massive generalisation, Africa feels like an “Anglican” continent; South America feels like a “Roman Catholic” continent (and I’m happy to be shot down on these ones as I’m way out of my depth), so these denominations become the natural Christian voice: but what is Europe? It’s got a Catholic south and centre but a Lutheran north and an Anglican north western fringe. So there’s no one voice by which ‘the Church’ can address ‘the world’?
Instead, Europeanism acknowledges a Christian past and may well be uncomfortable with including Muslims in the present qv. the blocked entry into the EU of Turkey, but it doesn’t have enough of a present, positive Christian voice.
Is that fair?
And is that a medium-term goal of ecumenism in this continent?

Robert, I suggested to Rowan Williams once that there is a PhD thesis in ‘the influence of climate on theology’ – on the grounds that the Reformation couldn’t have happened in southern Europe where the sun shines and people associate outdoors. He wasn’t convinced, but did understand – having experienced Wittenberg in winter – why Luther was an angry man.

I take your point about the division of the European church diminishing its ability to speak with a single voice. The reality is changing everywhere, of course. In South America the Pentecostals are compelling the Roman Catholic Church to face change and respond to a changing world. The same could be said of Africa. In Europe the more debilitating element in the church’s voice has been (in my opinion) (a) a long-held complacency rooted in the assumption that Christianity is self-evident in Europe, and (b) a lack of confidence in the church as it watches society change around it. Such confidence has not been helped by biblical illiteracy on the one hand and incipient materialism/consumerism on the other.

Anyway, I am off to Germany in the morning and will think about your comment while there.

A pity that Kirchentag Closing Service, with Bischof Nick Baines/Bradford preaching is not to be on TV. Just watched one of the 4 (!) Opening Services on NDR which I receive in Halifax. [On the original Astra satellite deserted by Sky to Astra 2.] Vast crowd in the sunny but I suspect cool open air.

Thanks Nick for the steer to read Cees Noteboom;s “Roads to Berlin”. I found it a really thought provoking book and it has made me rethink what history means as we are all so subjective in our reading of, or even downright ignorant about the most significant events in recent times. His elaborate if sometimes impenetrable text makes the point well though that we are bound to have problems understanding or judging the case for a united Europe if we lack the knowledge and fall back on cliché at best, prejudice at worst. It begins to sound horribly like most churchgoers problem with the most basic bible texts, let alone the deeper subtleties of doctrine. How healthy to have such an objective analysis of the outworking of 20th century European history from a man who was invaded by the Germans and had his father killed (accidentally) by the British.